


The Road and the Warrior

by philcollins



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-01 12:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8624842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philcollins/pseuds/philcollins
Summary: Modern A/U. Furiosa manages a roadhouse called The Citadel, owned by Immortan Joe. The Wives and Nux work in the roadhouse. Max stops in for a drink and a cheeseburger.





	1. The Citadel

Max climbs out of his rig, knee aching and stiff after so long behind the wheel. He adjusts his brace over his pant leg and then stretches, his joints cracking and his ancient and ragged leather jacket creaking as his arms reach toward the roasting sun and the infinite blue sky. A hot wind kicks up a tiny dust devil across the road and he idly watches it until it twists itself out on the asphalt. It’s too hot for his heavy leather jacket, but he’s naked without it so keeps it on. He turns away from the road and heads towards the low-slung building, clocking the two other rigs sitting in the unpaved parking lot, the two motorcycles parked closer to the door of this roadhouse in the Middle-of-Fucking-Nowhere, New Mexico. A sign on the door is the only name he has for this place: The Citadel.

He brings in dust and light and heat when he opens the door and steps inside. He hears the A/C wheeze and struggle. He smells stale beer and dust and vomit. But he can’t see, blinded by darkness, no windows letting in the sunshine. His eyes start to adjust and he takes in the room. It’s mostly empty but he clocks two Navajo sitting across the room at a rough-hewn table. They’re wearing colors – Red Thunder MC – and he accounts for the two choppers outside. They drink their beer in silence and clock him right back, disinterest in their eyes. They go back to watching the silent TV hung above the bar – baseball, a day game from back east. Max clocks the two truckers sitting separately at the bar, hunched over burgers and beer. One’s from Texas, his hook-‘em-horns t-shirt giving him away; the other must be driving the rig with Florida plates. Max easily spots the slight bulge visible beneath the hook-‘em-horms shirt – Texas is carrying. Florida is not carrying but he’s big and used to be a boxer – cauliflower ears and a mashed nose. Max clocks the woman behind the bar, busy with some sort of account book. Her hair is buzzed real short and she’s missing part of her left arm, has a hook for a hand, the leather holster for the prosthetic worn on the outside of her sweat-stained tank-top. From experience, Max knows she probably has a sawed-off or a baseball bat under the bar. Maybe both. He would, too, with this sort of clientele.

Two motorcycle gang members, a gun-toting Texan, a guy who knows how to handle himself in a fight, and a one-armed woman with weapons within easy reach: this is Max’s kind of place, then.

He shuffles over the bar and climbs onto a stool. The woman behind the bar doesn’t look up from her account book. “Be with you in a sec.” She finishes what she’s writing and closes the book. “What can I get you?”

“Mm.” His voice rusty from disuse. “Beer,” he manages.

She stares at him. Her kohl-smudged eyes are hard like stones. “What kind?”

“Cold beer.”

She stares at him. But doesn’t push. She grabs a glass with her good hand, her metal hook pulling on one of the taps. He can’t help but watch the hook work. She sets the condensing glass before him. “Thanks,” he grunts, burying the word in his glass as he lifts it to his lips. It’s nice and cold and he guzzles down half the pint, thirsty. “Food?” he asks into his glass, hungry. The woman slides a dog-eared, ring-stained menu onto the bar top. He barely glances at it. “Cheeseburger.”

“Everything?”

“Mm.”

“Fries?”

“Mm.”

She turns away, headed to the kitchen. He clocks the tight leather pants tucked into her heavy combat boots and the large skull tattoo on the back of her long neck. But not just a skull – a skull wearing the dress uniform cap of a Marine. She barks orders at someone through the kitchen pass-through. He grunts to himself, quickly putting it all together: the short hair, the tattoo, the missing limb, the combat boots, the overall hardness of the woman – she practically screams “soldier”. She was a Marine. She lost her arm serving.

He finds himself watching her from the corner of his eye as he waits for his food. Watches the way she doesn’t sway her hips when she walks. Watches her busy herself with this and that behind the bar. Watches her make change for the boxer from Florida before the man slips out the door and back into the desert. Watches Gun-Toting Texan try to look down her top and try to chat her up. She ignores both, ignores Gun-Toting Texan, and he very soon goes away, too, leaving Max alone at the bar. 

He drinks his beer and watches her face and finally notes how beautiful she is, despite her best efforts to downplay it with the short hair and hard, dark makeup and hard, dark demeanor.

When she sets food in front of him, he drowns the fries in ketchup and unabashedly eats like an animal, a bad habit. She takes his empty glass. “Another?”

He grunts around a mouthful of French fries.

“Don’t say much, do you?” she says flatly, pulling him another beer. He doesn’t answer. She probably didn’t expect him to.

“Where were you?” he finally asks.

Now she looks at him sharply, definitely not expecting that. “What?” He taps the back of his own neck and she understands him. “Afghanistan,” she answers. “Helmand Province.”

Shit. No wonder she lost an arm. “Ah,” is all he says.

“Did you serve?”

He shakes his head. “Was a cop,” he says with his mouth full. Her eyebrow lifts a little. She wasn’t expecting that either. He swallows. “Homicide detective.”

“Where?”

“Detroit.”

“But now you drive a rig?”

He nods, shrugs, lets her wonder how he got from there to here, from one wasteland to another. “That’s where you, ah...” He makes a vague gesture with his left arm, glancing at her hook. “Helmand Province?”

“IED in the road.” The hook twitches with the twitch of her shoulders. “I drove a supply rig over there.”

He nods and looks up at her and they’ve both run out words it seems and the A/C wheezes and their gazes stick together for a long and strange and inevitable moment that he doesn’t fully understand and it only breaks when the door to the kitchen bursts open and expels two girls wearing aprons.

He flinches and focuses on his food and hears the one-armed woman greet the girls with strange names. “Toast. Angharad. You’re both ten minutes late.”

The strangely-named girls greet her in return, in unison. “Sorry, Furiosa.”

That’s her name. Furiosa. He likes it.

TBC.


	2. Flirting, With Danger

The baseball’s almost over and the place is slow as shit. Not unusual. It’ll pick up tonight. It’ll be crazy. Back up is coming – Dag and Cheedo are due in later. But right now – slow. So she leans on the far end of the bar with Toast and they watch Angharad do what she does best: earn tips. 

 

Specifically, she’s flirting with the cop-turned-trucker from Detroit. Smiling at him and leaning on the bar right in front of him, invading his space a little, asking him too many questions, making him grunt – and smile. Just the littlest bit. Cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching.

 

Furiosa doesn’t have a way with men, not the way Angharad does. Yeah, the truckers try to look down her shirt, try to talk their way into her leathers. She ignores them. She doesn’t flirt. She doesn’t care about getting tips enough to do all that. The girls can do that. No, she’s there to put the kibosh on assholes who try to get handsy with the girls. She’s got brass knuckles and a baseball bat under the bar so she can take care of shit. She’s the guard dog. It doesn’t leave much room for her to feel like much of a woman. But then she hasn’t felt very womanly since the day she joined up with the Marines. Before that even. She’s always been a hard case. Plenty of people have called her a dyke in her time. She doesn’t care. They don’t know her.

 

“So what’re you hauling?” Angharad asks the man at the bar.

 

He grunts, shakes his head.

 

“Between gigs?”

 

He grunts.

 

“So where’re you headed?”

 

He grunts, shrugs.

 

“Where’d you come from?”

 

He grunts, jerks a thumb toward the door. “From outside.”

 

“Do you like baseball?”

 

He grunts.

 

“What’s your favorite team?”

 

He grunts. “Detroit.”

 

“Did you play baseball when you were a kid?”

 

He grunts.

 

“Are you married?”

 

A pause. He seems to find the bottom of his half-empty glass fascinating. He shakes his head.

 

“Do you have any kids?”

 

The guy doesn’t move. “No,” he says quietly. Furiosa sees more than hears the word.

 

“Are you here to fight?”

 

Now he looks up, frowning. “Mm?”

 

“Tonight. It’s fight night out back behind the bar,” Angharad tells him. “Winner takes home five hundred, six hundred bucks sometimes. Depends on the crowd. You didn’t come for that?”

 

The cop-turned-trucker shakes his head.

 

“Well you’re free to stick around. If you’re interested.”

 

He grunts and Furiosa isn’t sure, for the first time, if that’s a yes or a no.

 

“Bathroom?” he grunts.

 

Angharad points the way and he slips off his stool, shuffles off across the room, and disappears into the men’s room.

 

“Scintillating conversation, Angharad,” Toast comments when he’s gone.

 

Angharad comes closer, leans on the bar next to them. “Yeah but he’s pretty, isn’t he?”

 

“He’s a schlanger,” Toast scoffs.

 

“Nice body, nice eyes, great lips.” Toast scoffs again, loudly. “Plump. Did you notice?”

 

“No,” Furiosa answers tartly. “I didn’t.”

 

“Sure you didn’t.”

 

Furiosa ignores that and sharply raps the bar top with her hook. “Let’s get back to work.”

 

“Yo, are Joe and Rictus coming in tonight or what? Do we know?” Toast asks, pushing herself up from the bar. 

 

“I hope not,” Angharad answers. “God, I hope not.”

 

“Schlanger double act.”

 

“They’ll come,” Furiosa tells them, knowing hoping otherwise is a mistake.

 

 

XXXXX

 

It picks up, as she knew it would. The music’s on loud. Nux and Capable are at it full tilt in the kitchen, getting burgers and chicken wings and quesadillas out the window as fast as they can. Angharad, Cheedo, Toast, and Dag bustle and hustle. And she slings drinks behind the bar, controlling the building chaos.

 

He’s still there, the cop-turned-trucker, but at some point he moved himself to a table in the corner. He drinks alone. Maybe he is sticking around for the fights after all. She doesn’t know, doesn’t care. She keeps an eye on him, though – fucker still hasn’t paid his mounting tab.

 

Joe and his son Rictus do eventually show up. Joe owns the damn place, after all, and Rictus likes to whale on people any chance he gets – no way they’d be missing fight night. The front door bangs open, nearly coming off the hinges, to announce their arrival – Rictus leading in Joe and his every-present O2 tank. They stop in the middle of the room, surveying their tiny kingdom. Everyone knows who they are and the crowd hushes a bit, watching Joe and Rictus with...what? Reverence? Respect? No, something more like loathing mixed with a heavy dose of fear. It’s enough like respect to fool the old man and his idiot son.

 

Rictus snaps his fingers at a pair of locals sitting at a table in the middle of the room and the locals hop to, relinquishing their seats, taking their drinks and chicken wings with them. Rictus holds out a chair for the old man and Joe lowers himself into the seat like a king taking his throne. Rictus wedges himself into his own chair and it creaks under his weight. Rictus snaps his fingers again, bellowing, “Drinks!” 

 

Furiosa started drawing their beers as soon as they walked in and has them ready to go on the bar. Now she just needs a waitress. She can see the girls looking at one another across the room, silently debating who’s going to serve Joe and Rictus tonight, who gets the privilege. Angharad seems to draw the short straw and steps up to the bar. Furiosa sets the two beers on her tray and sends her off with a fortifying nod.

 

“The splendid Angharad,” Joe says with oily pleasure as she sets the drinks before them. Rictus leers at the girl, sucking his teeth. “Thank you, darlin’.”

 

Angharad isn’t flirting now, that’s for sure, giving Joe a short nod and a tight smile. “Anything to eat, boss?” she asks because she has to.

 

“Hot wings and some of those jalapeno poppers.”

 

“Now Daddy, you know spicy food ain’t good for your ulcer,” Rictus chirps and Joe slaps the younger, bigger man on the back of the head.

 

“Shut the fuck up, Rictus. Hot wings and jalapeno poppers,” Joe repeats.

 

“Sure, boss,” Angharad says, turning away.

 

“Now walk away slowly, girl,” Joe says, loud enough for everyone to hear, earning some chuckles. Furiosa catches the grimace on Angharad’s face and the girl shuffles toward the kitchen pass-through as fast as she can.

 

Things get loud again after that, the room getting boisterous as the drinks flow and the anticipation of bare-knuckled violence grows. The girls never stay for the fights, but Nux will, Furiosa knows. Sometimes he fights, sometimes he doesn’t. He’s a skinny thing but scrappy, usually wins, takes a beating well if he has to. Likes to try to impress Joe – god knows why. Furiosa herself will stay for the fights, too. She’s not proud about it, really, but she likes the violence, she likes the rawness. It reminds her of her boot camp days, the hand-to-hand combat always her favorite part, truth be told. Joe tries to get her to join the fights out behind the Citadel, probably because he thinks it would be funny to watch a one-armed woman grapple in the dirt with some grabby man. She can’t say she’s not tempted to do it, just to show them all she can still fight, can still kick any man’s ass, but she refuses to fight – simply because he wants her to do it. Joe may be the owner, but she’s the boss here - not his plaything. As Toast would say, “We are not his things.”

 

Furiosa senses commotion out on the floor. It’s about that time in the evening when she usually has to break up some skirmish, toss out some belligerent idiot, end some pre-fight fight, deal with some annoying-ass shit or another. She turns from the hard liquors to see what’s going on. Shit – it’s Rictus. He’s half-drunk and grabbing at Angharad, trying to pull her onto his lap. Angharad’s pushing at his hands, trying to get free, but he’s not taking the fucking hint and now he’s got hold of her wrist and Joe’s doing fuck all about it and now Furiosa’s going to have to intervene. Normally she’d just grab her baseball bat, wield it threateningly, and tell a grabby asshole to get the hell out of the Citadel and never come back. But this is the boss’s son – she can’t really threaten to bash his head in, unfortunately.

 

But before Furiosa can even come around the bar, someone is already there, coming out of nowhere to stand before Rictus and the trapped Angharad. It’s the cop-turned-trucker from Detroit. “That’s enough,” he grumbles, sounding more annoyed and impatient than anything else.

 

Rictus looks up, his beady eyes taking in the other man for a moment. “What?”

 

“Don’t think she likes that,” Cop-Turned-Trucker answers quietly, shoulders shrugging a little.

 

“Who fucking cares, who the hell are you, my daddy owns this place, I can do whatever the fuck I want!” Rictus squeals, his big head getting suddenly red.

 

Cop-Turned-Trucker reaches out, almost casually, and smacks Rictus hard across the face. “Shut up.”

 

For a moment, Rictus is too stunned, too surprised, to respond. Angharad takes the opportunity, easily removing herself from Rictus’s grasp and slipping away. The room has gone still, though, watching, holding its breath. Even the music is on a well-timed lull. 

 

But then Rictus jumps to his feet, his chair skittering back, and all seven feet of him towers over the other man, more than a foot shorter. But Cop-Turned-Trucker is ready for it when Rictus reaches out to shove him. He easily knocks Rictus’s hand away, his movements compact and practiced and almost relaxed. Rictus growls and grabs Cop-Turned-Trucker by the front of his leather jacket, holding him in place, one fist rearing back and ready to plant itself in the shorter man’s face.

 

“Let him go,” Joe barks, stilling his son’s hand, and Rictus looks to his father, confused.

 

“But, daddy—“

 

“Let him go.”

 

Rictus glowers. For a moment, it looks like he’ll ignore his father’s command. But finally he lets go of the man’s leather jacket. Gets in a little shove nonetheless.

 

“You,” Joe spits, snapping his fingers at the Cop-Turned-Trucker. “You’re fighting tonight. You and Rictus. Settle it then. Outside.”

 

Cop-Turned-Trucker eyes Joe. Eyes Rictus. All seven feet of him. All the hulking, gym-hardened muscle straining Rictus’s t-shirt. Angharad had commented on Cop-Turned-Trucker’s nice body and Furiosa is sure he’s fit under that leather jacket, but Rictus looks like the goddamn Hulk next to him. The smaller man just shrugs, though, nonchalant. “Fine,” he grunts and turns away, shuffling back to his table, the crowd parting for him, staring at him. He sits and takes up his beer.

 

Furiosa steps up to the Cop-Turned-Trucker’s table and slams a shot glass of tequila down in front of him. He looks up at her, surprised. “You’ll need that,” she says flatly. His eyebrows quirk, something like amusement flickering at the edges of his stupid pretty mouth. Rictus is going to rip this damn fool’s head off. “Fool,” she calls him to his face and stalks away.

TBC.


	3. Fight Night

Nux goes down hard, flat on his back, and Furiosa can hear all the air leave his skinny, pale chest. Out of the corner of her eye, Furiosa catches Capable flinching. “I thought you girls didn’t like the fights,” she comments, keeping her eyes on the action. The young Navajo kid, a fledgling Red Thunder MC, pounces on top of the momentarily-stunned Nux and starts laying into him.

Capable flinches again, watching Nux get a face full of fist. “That’s right. I don’t. Get up, Nux! Get up!”

Aha. Nux and Capable, huh? That must be fairly new – it’s the first Furiosa has heard of it. Nux is a good kid, she supposes. A little in thrall of Joe, perhaps. Furiosa’ll keep an eye on it. As long as they don’t let personal matters interfere in the kitchen, she supposes it’s all right. One might even call it cute. If one called anything cute. Which Furiosa doesn’t.

Nux manages to get the Red Thunder kid off by punching him in the balls and the fight is over pretty quick after that, Nux bouncing around, victorious but bleeding from the head a bit.

“Better go get him cleaned up,” she says and Capable nods, reaching out for Nux. He takes her hand and lets Capable lead him away from the throng of shouting spectators crowded around their makeshift dirt ring out behind the Citadel. Nux’s blood looks black on the dirt. Someone kicks dirt over the blood.

The next two fighters are getting ready, peeling off their shirts, wedding rings, watches, guns, whatever else. One of the local sheriff’s deputies – the sheriff himself shouting encouragement at him from the sidelines – and some newcomer she doesn’t know. Some fleshy sack of shit who watched Fight Club one too many times, by the looks of him. His world’s about to get rocked. Hopefully he has someone to drive him to the hospital.

Furiosa scans the crowd. Watches money change hands around the ring as bets are laid. Watches Rictus and Joe hold court at the other end of the ring. Watches some drunk vomit. Earlier, she’d had eyes on the Fool, the Cop-Turned-Trucker, as he stood by himself at the edges of the crowd, but she’s since lost track of him. She scans, looking for him. He’ll be fighting soon, the night spiraling up to its inevitable conclusion. Maybe he wised up and took off. She doesn’t see him.

A grunt beside her and she looks. He’s suddenly right there, at her elbow, as though conjured by her very thoughts. He gives her a brief nod and she eyes him coolly. He’s shorter than she is, she realizes. She wonders what it’d be like to fight him. She’d have to get him on his back, pin his arms with her knees, but she thinks she could take him.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she says to him and he looks at her. “You could just jump in your rig and take off.”

He shakes his head a little. “Nah.”

“She’s not even here, though.”

He frowns, cocks his head.

“Angharad.”

“Who?” he asks aloud.

“The waitress. From before. Whose honor you so gallantly defended.” Understanding finally reaches his eyes and he nods shortly. “She’s not even here to see you fight this guy.”

The Fool grunts and waves his hand dismissively. It surprises her. She assumed he liked Angharad.

“So why are you doing this?” she has to ask. She watches him, waiting for a response, and he looks her in the eye, his eyes dark in the low light but sparkling like starlight, and gives her a brief, wry smile she can’t interpret. He stares at her like he’s trying to tell her something and she stares back, trying to figure him out.

A collective yell goes up from the crowd and she looks to the ring, figuring the fight’s done. It is – the sheriff’s deputy standing victorious over the fleshy sack of shit, who is fading out like a dim bulb. A couple guys step forward to drag the sack of shit out of the ring to make way for the night’s main event and Rictus is already coming forward, peeling off his t-shirt, the crowd getting louder and chanting his name.

“Come on, boy,” Rictus shouts, beckoning to the Fool. “Let’s go!”

A warm hand slips into her good hand and she looks down, caught off guard, almost jerking her hand free. It’s the Fool, sliding something off his wrist, over their joined hands, and onto her own wrist – it’s a woven bracelet made of some kind of cord. He tightens it around her wrist and she stares at him. “Don’t wanna lose it,” he mutters, releasing her hand. She should protest or something. But she doesn’t, too disarmed.

He shrugs out of his ancient, dusty leather jacket and hands that to her, then yanks his sweat-stained henley over his head and hands that to her as well. “Don’t want ‘em getting stolen,” he says and she really should protest – she’s not a fucking clothestree. But she doesn’t. Just watches him turn away, rolling his shoulders, and stalk towards the waiting Rictus.

Rictus wastes no time, doesn’t even wait for the Fool to square up before he’s swinging out with a haymaker right, catching the Fool in the jaw, catching him off guard, snapping his head to one side. Furiosa catches the dazed look on the damn Fool’s face and before the Fool can shake it off, clear his vision, Rictus swings out again, this time with the left, just as hard, connecting, and the Fool goes down in the dirt. Furiosa shakes her head, knows that’s it.

But the Fool’s grunting, trying to push himself up and wipe blood from his nose at the same time. “That all you got?” he mutters and unfortunately Rictus hears him and charges forward, grabbing the Fool by the neck and by the thigh and lifting him bodily off the ground, lifting the Fool chest high and then tossing him away like a log. The Fool drops hard, lays there groaning while the crowd goes nuts above him. Rictus storms closer and kicks the Fool in the ribs for good measure, kicks him in the head, and then bellows like a gorilla over his kill.

But the Fool is a fool and scrabbles away in the dirt, getting some distance and pushing himself up. “Stay down, Fool,” Furiosa mutters to herself, but the Fool is getting up to his feet, much to the crowd’s delight. He breathes hard and swipes at the blood pouring down his face and readies himself, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, shaking out his arms and cracking his knuckles like he hasn’t just had his ass kicked.

“Come on, then,” the Fool mutters, standing still, squared up, waiting for Rictus to come at him again.

And Rictus does, charging across the ring in a few long strides, right arm already swinging out for the Fool’s head. But the Fool’s off-hand, his left, strikes up like a cobra and grabs Rictus’s incoming fist out of the air. Almost faster than Furiosa can take in what’s happening, the Fool twists and wrenches Rictus’s arm in one quick movement and there’s a sickening pop as Rictus’s arm dislocates from his shoulder and he goes down like a sack of flour, screaming. But the Fool keeps hold of Rictus’s fist, keeping the arm held up straight and delivering a swift punch to the elbow, bending it inside out and snapping the joint. Rictus stops screaming, passed out from the pain just like that, and the crowd goes quiet. Everyone stares at the Fool. The Fool breathes hard and stares back from a blood-covered face, his fists curled at his sides – probably ready to take on an army of Rictus supporters, if need be.

Joe rises from his seat at ring side and it’s so quiet Furiosa can hear the oxygen moving through the tubes of his cannula. Joe steps into the ring and the Fool readies himself for whatever’s coming. But Joe brushes by the Fool, seemingly unconcerned, and stands over the prone body of his son. “Get him into my car,” Joe commands to whomever will listen. “I’ll take him to the hospital myself.”

It takes four men to drag Rictus away, Joe following with his O2 tank, and fight night is over after that, the crowd subdued and muttering, dispersing fast. And again Furiosa loses track of the Fool, not seeing him see him slink off into the dark or whatever he does. She still has his clothes.

TBC.


	4. The Rig

The last of the cars pull out of the dirt parking lot and drive away, a few heading north along the old highway, a few heading south. He sits in the cab of his rig with the lights off, watching taillights disappear down the road, wiping dried blood off his face with an old rag and some bottled water. He should get going, too, but his head is still bleeding at the hairline where that big bastard kicked him. He presses the cloth to it, waits for it to stop. His face hurts, his bad knee throbs, and it hurts to breathe too deeply. Probably cracked a few ribs.

 

There’s another thing keeping him here for the moment – he forgot to get his jacket back from the woman running the bar, Furiosa. He’s gonna have to go find her in a minute, when he stops bleeding and after he puts on a shirt. Then he’ll head out, despite the fact he just wants to stretch out on his bunk and sleep off the thousand aches and pains. He keeps the rag pressed against his wound and tilts his head back against the headrest, closing his eyes. Just needs to rest a minute.

 

A sharp tapping on his window has him jerking in his seat, eyes flying open. Was he asleep? He isn’t sure. He looks to the window, one hand reaching under his driver’s seat for his sawed-off just in case. But he abandons that when he sees it’s her. The woman from the bar. Furiosa. She stands down below his driver’s side door with his abandoned leather jacket and shirt in her hook hand and what looks like a fishing kit in her other hand. No – it’s a first aid kit. “You gonna let me in or what?” she asks, loud enough for him to hear through the window.

 

He stares at her a moment. Let her in? He never lets anyone into his rig. He should just roll down the window and take his clothes back, thank her and be done with it, drive away. But he finds himself jerking his head toward the passenger’s side and she rounds the front of the rig. He pushes the passenger door open for her and she climbs in, slides into the passenger’s seat like she’s done it a thousand times before. She holds out his jacket and shirt. “Here,” she says.

 

“Thanks,” he mutters, taking them, tossing them onto the bed in the back. She’s looking at him, her face hard to read in the darkness of the cab. He flicks on the cab lights. Doesn’t help – he still can’t decipher the look she’s giving him.

 

“You look like shit,” she finally says. “Did he break your ribs?”

 

He shakes his head. “Cracked a couple, maybe.”

 

“You’re still bleeding.”

 

He grunts a little, agreeing, dabbing at his head wound with the bloody rag.

 

“That rag is filthy,” she says and he supposes it is. He found it on the floor. “I brought the first aid kit,” she adds, opening it.

 

“I’m alright,” he protests.

 

But she ignores him, sliding out of her seat to stand by his driver’s chair, standing close in the confined space, invading his space. She plops the first aid kit down in his lap for him to hold and touches his chin with her good hand, tilting his face towards the light. She studies his wounds, moving his face this way and that. Her hand is warm. He studies her neck and her face, hovering above his. He can’t tell what color her eyes are in this light. “Your head needs stitches,” she says after a moment. “But I don’t have a needle and thread.”

 

“S’alright,” he mutters, shaking his head a little within her grasp.

 

She reaches into the first aid kit, finding cotton balls and a small brown bottle – hydrogen peroxide, he reckons. “Pour some of that on a cotton ball,” she instructs him and he does it, handing her the wet cotton ball. She swipes at the cut on his head a few times and asks for another. She cleans the wound again and finds a butterfly bandage in the kit, unwrapping it deftly with one hand and using her hook hand and good hand to pinch the wound closed while she sticks the bandage over it.

 

“Best I can do for that,” she says, her good hand cradling his head, her thumb gently smoothing down the bandage.

 

She smells like sweat and beer and soap. “Thanks,” he grunts, knowing she didn’t have to do it all, wondering why she did.

 

She’s not done. She makes him wet more cotton balls and carefully cleans the rest of the cuts and scrapes on his face, admonishing him while she works. “You shouldn’t have taken on Rictus like that,” she says. “That’s my job, to deal with him and Joe, to protect the girls.”

 

He grunts, not sure if he’s apologizing or not.

 

“Why’d you do it? Why’d you intervene like that?”

 

“Right thing to do,” he answers, shrugging.

 

“Most men wouldn’t have bothered,” she comments, finding alcohol wipes in the first aid kit and unwrapping one, wiping his face, wiping away the dried blood he’d missed earlier. “But you were a cop. I guess you feel compelled to do the right thing, huh?”

 

He shrugs again, thinking about how to answer that. Decides not to. He didn’t always do the right thing as a cop.

 

“Is that what you do? Drive around in your rig finding damsels in distress to try to save?” There’s the slightest curve of humor on her lips and he echoes it. “You own this rig?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It’s nice.” She runs the alcohol wipe down his neck. He swallows.

 

“What’d you drive?” he starts haltingly. “In Afghanistan.”

 

She frowns and seems to focus extra hard on cleaning behind his ear, where he’s pretty sure there’s no blood, and maybe he shouldn’t have asked. “Mack Granite heavy utility truck,” she finally answers, turning his face away to clean behind his other ear. “Nothing as fancy as this. No sleeping cab. Very basic. Didn’t even have armor plating.” She scrubs at his skin and he doesn’t stop her because she’s not done. “It was just me and the Ace and the open road. The Ace, he was my sergeant. He liked to take pictures of the landscape while we drove. The mountains in the distance and the scrub and the desert and the sky. He called it beautiful. I guess it was beautiful out there, really. Harsh but beautiful. And then one day...” She frowns and she seems very far away, looking right through him. He should stop her. “Well. One minute I was driving and the next minute I was surrounded by flames and missing part of an arm. I grabbed the Ace and pulled him out of the cab. But he was already dead. He was still holding that stupid camera of his.”

 

He reaches up and lays his hand over hers, stilling her, pressing her palm to the side of his head. She comes back from a dark place and looks at him again. He knows what it’s like to be haunted by the dead. “M’sorry,” he says softly. “Furiosa.”

 

Her eyes find his and he can read the faint surprise there – that he knows her name. He strokes his thumb over the back of her hand and she slides it away, breaking contact. She straightens up, something shuttering over her face, and he knows she’s leaving now. Time for him to go.

 

“Show me your cab,” she says.

 

He blinks. “Well it’s right there,” he says plainly, confused. It’s well-equipped but not very big. All she need do is turn around once and she’ll have seen it all. The bed, the storage cupboards, the mini fridge. That’s about it. Not much, but it’s home.

 

She turns away. Ducks into the back and sits on the bed, carefully laying his dirty shirt and dusty jacket on the floor. She sits there a moment, watching him watch her. “I don’t do this. Ever,” she says and he’s still confused. Do what?

 

Then she’s shrugging out of the harness holding her prosthetic on and with one hand pulling her tank top off, leaving her in just a tight cotton bandeau around her breasts, and now he thinks he gets it. He stares at her, at her skin, so much skin, at her shortened arm, his blood singing through his veins, collecting down below, and he has to resist the urge to turn around and make sure there’s no one behind him, that she actually means _him_. He can’t move, just sits there dumbly with the first aid kit in his lap, staring at the beautiful woman on his bed. Staring too long because now she’s folding her arms over her chest, covering herself and looking at the floor and _shit_ he’s the worst at this.

 

“Hey. Hey,” he says and sets the first aid kit aside. He ducks into the back and sits beside her on the narrow bed. “Hey,” he says again, quietly, and reaches up to cup the back of her head with his hand.

 

She’s still a moment, but then unfolds her arms from her chest and mimics him, reaching up to rest her hand on the back of his head, her nails scratching at his short hair, sending a shiver down his back. She leans toward him and their foreheads touch together and he closes his eyes. Breathes her in, shaky – he’s nervous.

 

“What’s your name?” she asks.

 

“Max,” he murmurs. His nose brushes hers. “My name’s Max.”

 

Her mouth meets his. Warm and soft. Tentative then demanding. He obliges, keeps up with her mouth, her tongue. He feels lightheaded when her hand scratches down his bare chest. He breathes hard when she pushes him away.

 

She’s standing and he’s reaching for her. She lets him pull her close, lets him kiss her flat belly. Her hand is in his hair – she tugs, pulls his mouth away. Steps back. Starts to take off the rest of her clothes. He keeps up, and when they’re both bare they reach for each other again.

 

She sits astride him and puts him inside her. He groans against her breast. Her sigh is in his ear. They move together, growing frantic and artless, skin slapping as they fuck. He makes sure she comes, using his rough fingers, making her cry out and arch and dig her nails into his shoulder. He pounds into her and comes hard inside her and sees white.

 

They breathe hard and rest. She’s wrapped around him, her face pressed to his neck, and he slowly runs his hands up and down her smooth back. Too soon, she’s shifting, sitting up, trying to climb off his lap. “I should go,” she says vaguely.

 

His arms tighten around her. “Why?” he grunts against her breast. He takes a nipple into his mouth, trying to convince her to stay. She stays.

 

He lays her down on his narrow bed and uses his mouth and his hands all over her until they’re both ready again. He watches her face as he pushes into her slowly, deeply. Her eyes are shut so he says her name and strokes her face and she looks at him. He pushes into her again, so slow, and she nods a little, lets him set the pace – slow and languid and unhurried and it goes on and on and on.

 

He falls asleep tangled up in her, wondering how long she’ll stay.

 

 

TBC.


	5. The Road

She wakes suddenly, disorientated for a second until she feels the warm, solid body wedged in next to hers. Feels his body jerk and spasm against hers. Feels his fingers dig into the curve of her hip. Feels his heart hammering against her own chest. He’s making low noises in his throat, distressed sounds, and she looks to his face. He’s still asleep, his face creased and pinched. He’s having a nightmare.

 

She touches his face gently, says softly, “Hey. Hey. Wake up.” He jerks hard one last time and his eyes open and he gasps. He blinks a few times, coming up from wherever he was. His eyes find hers. They’re a little wild. “You were dreaming,” she says.

 

He grunts. “Sorry. Sorry,” he mutters.

 

“It’s okay,” she says, stroking his face a little.

 

He grunts again, sitting up, pulling away from her touch. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and she thinks he’s going to get up, maybe get dressed. Which will be her cue to leave. She’s already stayed too long – through the windshield she can see the sky just starting to lighten. She didn’t mean to stay the night with him, she really didn’t, didn’t mean to fall asleep.

 

He doesn’t stand, though, instead perching on the edge of the narrow bed, leaning his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands together tightly. She watches him and he stays that way for some time. She’s not sure what to do, really. She sits up. She should probably leave him alone. It’s time to get going anyway.

 

“I, uh...” he starts. “Had a wife and a son. They died. Years and years ago. They, uh... They were killed.”

 

She stills. That’s probably what his nightmare was about. She doesn’t move. She waits for him to go on. He’s quiet for so long.

 

“It was a home invasion. I was...I was at work. Someone came into the house, looking for money or drugs or whatever. Found my family instead. And, uh...” She sees the way his eyes squeeze shut, the way he bows his head lower. She wants to tell him not to go on. “I found the man who killed them. And I killed him.”

 

His quiet confession cuts through her. She doesn’t breathe.

 

“The police knew it was me. They didn’t do anything about it. But after that...” He shakes his head. She thinks she gets it – how could he go on being a cop after that? “Eventually fell into driving a rig. Been on the road ever since.”

 

Her head buzzes, the weight of his confession dizzying. Her chest feels tight. Aching for him, she realizes. There’s nothing she can say. So she reaches out, touches his bare shoulder, expecting him to shrug her off. He doesn’t. So she dares more, scooting her body close to his, putting her arms around him. His hands stayed clasped together and his body is coiled tight under her skin but he leans into her touch, leans his head against hers. They breathe together.

 

They stay that way and the sun comes up over the flat desert, shines through the windshield, bathes them in gold and red. She leans back and takes him with her, lying back on the bed. She puts her legs around him and takes him inside her again and again and again and again.

 

XXXXXXXXX

 

They dress together later and sit in the front of the cab, him behind the wheel, her in the passenger’s seat. They’re quiet, staring out at the desert through the windshield. It’s beautiful and empty. The unknown stretches out before them. It reminds her of being in the rig with the Ace.

 

Eventually, the man beside her – Max, his name is Max – turns the key in the ignition and the engine rumbles, the rig coming to life. “Come with me,” he says simply.

 

Something bright and warm flares inside her and she thinks about it. Thinks about what it’d be like to hitch her life to this man’s. Drive with him out into that unknown. Eventually leave him somewhere down the road. Or maybe marry him instead. Convince him to live in a house again. Have a kid with him. Replace what was lost. As if she could.

 

She smiles at him, sad. Joe and Rictus will be back eventually, she knows. She shakes her head. “Have to stay here. Have to protect the girls.”

 

He nods. She pushes open her door but can’t look away from him yet. She wants to remember his face. His eyes are blue-gray, she notices. Like a stormy sea. She leans over the arm of her seat and he meets her in the middle and she kisses him one last time, wanting to remember that too.

 

She climbs out of the rig and watches as he pulls away and heads south down the old highway. Only when he’s gone out of sight does she realize she’s still wearing his paracord bracelet around her wrist. She smiles and hopes he’ll come back someday.


End file.
